Florida Sentinel Bulletin

Anti-violence activist Diane Latiker was excited the other day as she showed a visitor around her modest one-story headquarters in the heart of the Roseland community on Chicago South Side.

She’s excited about providing a free Thanksgiving Dinner to teens on Saturday, November 17, at Christian Fenger Academy High School. Latiker plans to do so through her 9-year-old nonprofit, Kids Off the Block, which last year served more than 500 teens and their families, she told reporters. Besides donations, families throughout the community plan to prepare meals for the event.

“Last year, Isiah Thomas donated turkeys,” the mother of eight beamed as she mentioned the retired NBA player. “We fed so many children and their families. It was great. I started it five years ago because so many kids were coming to me and telling me they didn’t have Thanksgiving Dinner. We hope to beat last year’s numbers.”

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Israeli strikes hit two media centers in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, as Israel warned it was widening its range of targets to go after military commanders of the territory’s Hamas rulers. Palestinian militants meanwhile fired at least one more long-range rocket at Tel Aviv, the fourth day in a row which the Israeli heartland has come under fire.

The fifth day of Israel’s campaign against Gaza rocket operations finds it at a crossroads of whether to launch a ground invasion or pursue Egyptian-led truce efforts. Israel has said it is not prepared to enter into a truce without guarantees the rocket fire won’t resume.

“The Israeli military is prepared to significantly expand the operation,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting.

Early Sunday, the military carried out dozens of attacks on rocket-launching sites, a major training base and the two media centers. Israeli gunboats also fired on militant sites on the Gaza shore line, the military said without elaborating.

Seven were killed in airstrikes Sunday, including five children ranging in age from one to 11, according to Ashraf al-Kidra, a Gaza health official.

Two of the children, a 3-year-old girl and a 5-year-old boy, were from the same family and were killed by an airstrike on the three-story home in the town of Beit Lahiya. Hamas security officials said three missiles struck the house, owned by a Gaza family with links to militants’ rocket squads. It was not known if any militants were in or near the house at the time of the strike. Another strike targeted a Hamas militant in his car outside his home in the Shati refugee camp near Gaza City, but also killed an 11-year-old girl passing by at the time, al-Kidra said.

The deaths bring to 53 the number of Palestinians killed since the operation began on Wednesday. Twenty of the dead were civilians, and more than 400 civilians have been wounded, al-Kidra said. On the Israeli side, three civilians have been killed and more than 50 wounded by rocket fire.

Barely a month after a Cleveland bus driver uppercut a disruptive female passenger on his route, another brawl between a bus operator and teenager on Monday in Baltimore went viral.

The video shows the two women scrapping throughout the bus until the driver finally gains control of the teen. At the 1:47, the driver is heard repeatedly asking the girl, “You wanna fight somebody? Does it make you feel better?”

Adrian Williams, 22, was sentenced to life in prison for the 2011 brutal slaying of 17-year-old Quinton Brown in a deserted cemetery.

It’s a story of dark twists and turns — and suspicions still linger.

Denzel Fort, Williams and Keldrick Washington spotted the teenager standing on a street corner at approximately 3:00 a.m. They asked him to ride with them to test pistols — including a .357 Smith and Wesson and an EAA .357 revolver — at the historic Natchez City Cemetery.

Washington is also charged with murder; his trial is later this month.

Andrew Thomas, 18, has been charged with solicitation of murder and solicitation of murder for hire for attempting to hire a hitman to kill his girlfriend and her children.

According to Cook County Sheriff’s police spokesman, Frank Bilecki, Thomas was serving time for battering his girlfriend and planned for the hit to take place before his next court appearance on December 3rd of this year. He offered $3,000 for the slaying of his girlfriend, and an additional $1,000 to kill 3 of her 4 children — aged from 2- to 4-years-old — if they got in the way.

The youngest child, the only one fathered by Thomas, was to be spared.

WASHINGTON — Former House speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday she will run to keep her job as the Democratic leader in the House, after a pair of elections that kept the party in the minority there even as Democrats gained seats in the Senate and a second term for President Barack Obama.

“My colleagues made it very clear: ‘Don’t even think of leaving’,” she recalled at a news conference, surrounded by women lawmakers. “I have made a decision to submit my name to my colleagues to once again serve as the House Democratic leader.”

After losing his seat to Democrat challenger Patrick Murphy, Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) turned down an offer to run for office in Georgia from the state’s Republican Party chairwoman, Sue Everhart, saying that he’ not an “NFL free agent.”

In an interview, West addressed Everhart’s offer, he said, “Look, let me tell you something. I have moved my wife around for 20-some-odd years, being in the military, and she was also the daughter of a career military guy.”

“When I retired, she chose Florida. That’s where my daughter’s in school, in college, my youngest daughter’s in high school. That’s our home. It’s a very nice thing, but I’m not an NFL free agent.”

Mary Woods is so incensed that her son Jamal, a freshman at the University of Mississippi, was racially attacked on the school’s campus that she has enlisted the help of two civil rights organizations who are offering a reward to bring  justice to her family.

The 19-year-old ROTC freshman, who had planned to graduate and then enlist to serve in this country’s armed forces, became the target of several racist taunts that began in August.  Someone reportedly wrote racial slurs on his dorm room door that read, “Blacks are known to steal,” followed by profanity that was scrawled on the youth’s door along with smeared lotion and two playing cards.

The incident left both mother and son shaken.

Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) and Rep. George Miller (D-CA) have both proposed legislation aimed at shortening long lines on Election Day.

In the light of infamously slow voting lines that plagued states like Florida and Ohio this year, Coons introduced the Louis L. Redding Fair, Accurate, Secure and Timely (FAST) Voting Act of 2012.

It’s modeled after President Obama’s Race to the Top education program and it will reward states with federal grants if they make voting a quicker and more efficient process.

Besides long lines at the polls, which some people waited in for up to nine hours, this election season also had shorter early-voting periods, photo ID and poll location confusion, and reports of uncounted ballots.

Coons hasn’t set a dollar amount for the grants yet, but in order to qualify for them states would need to improve their voting process by:

Providing flexible registration opportunities, including same-day registration; Providing early voting, at a minimum of 9 of the 10 calendar days preceding an election;  Providing absentee voting, including no-excuse absentee voting;  Providing assistance to voters who do not speak English as a primary language; and  Providing assistance to voters with disabilities, including visual impairment.